Typecast Posters

For their typography project this year the HNC worked in pairs on a project called 'Typecast'. We put a set of 12 names in a hat - 6 typographers and 6 typeface designers. Each pair of students picked one out, and then were tasked with explooring their subject and then creating two A2 posters in celebration of their chosen designer. 

The typographers were : Neville Brody, April Greiman, Reid Miles, George Olden, Paula Scher and Wolfgang Weingart. 

The typeface designers were : Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger, Herb Lubalin, Bruno Maag, Erik Spiekermann, Carol Twombly. 

Once this project was completetd we exhibited in the new BA Studio as part of our annual Mentor Night - where our industry mentors gather to kick off the mentoring programme each year. Designers love type and obviously they loved these posters.  

The font used for the Typecast  name was also designed by a former student Terry Smith, who is now Senior Porudct Designer at Dyson in Bristol and a long-standing mentor, and the A2s were printed on 180gsm matte paper at Edinburgh Copyshop.

A Time and A Place : Riso Print Exhibition

One of our 2021 Graphic Design graduates, Gemma Gorton, a D&AD New Blood winner, is currently Artist-in-Residence at Out Of The Blueprint risop studio in Leith, and is exhibiting a new body of work created during her time there. Capturing the changing colours of her Edinburgh home, Gemma’s work gives a glimpse of a quiet city of street scenes, public parks and under-explored nooks through dawn, dusk and twilight.A3 prints, a set of stamps and an amazing flickbook comprise a beautiful set of riso explorations.

'A Time and a Place' provides a a reflective and insightful perspective and presents a very particular time and a very particular place. Out of the Blueprint is a social enterprise supporting young artists in Scotland through the power of print. Find out more.
The exhibition runs from 12 March – 23 April 2022 at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm and is free.

Hot Issues in Graphic Design

HNC Graphic Design recently completed their design-in-context essays - a 1500 word exploration of a hot topic in Visual Communication. The essay questions included controversial subjects in creative advertising, such as sex, alcohol and tobacco, plus design trends, and also the option to explore a single typeface. As part of this project we also asked the group to design and publish their essay in booklet format. Working with content you have written yourself is always an interesting challenge, and you can check out some example covers and spreads below, and view the full range of visual ideas on this project at our issuu digital publication page at issuu.com

 
Sophia Bhullar - Sex Sells

McKenzie Armitage - Making Addiction Cool

Darik Malik - Design Sprints

Berlin Letterpress Experience

As part of our annual study trip to Berlin, we booked the Year One Graphics class on a visit to P98a - Erik Spiekermann's fantastic Letterpress studio located on Potsdamer Strasse in central Berlin.

Spiekermann set up this studio primarily to work on personal projects and exploring how letterpress type  can be redefined and used in the 21st century. The studio is equipped with a number of Korrex letterpress machines and Heidelberg Windmill press as well as a modern Riso printer.

The studio also designs and cuts its own wooden letterpress type.

Director Ferdinand Ulrich  explained how the studio operates, demonstrated setting up the machines, and showed the class samples from Erik Spikermann's collections - including font specimen books from the early 1900s, and more than 500 cases of poster type, mostly made from wood.

Ferdinand's colleague Lunia  D'Ambrosino also explained how she had applied for an internship at P98a having graduated with a Bachelors degree in Visual Communication.


Typesetting a poster on the Korrex.


Editorial piece printed via Letterpress


Erik Spiekermann's signature quote, letterpress A1 posterzine.


Ferdinald Ulrich talking to the class.


Find out more about P98a on their website, and visit if you happen to be in Berlin.

Into Orbit

HND Year 2 recently finished a short poster project set by former graduates Kyle McPartlin and Kiera Winfield, both designers at Edinburgh agency Orbit.

They set a brief to explore the word 'collaboration', and the class were tasked with each designing a single A3 poster using the risograph process. We exhibited the work in the hub and also invited along Johnny Gailey, who runs Out of the Blueprint studio in Leith, and specialise in riso printing and facilitated the production of the work.

Kyle and Kiera are due to announce a winner of the project next week, and that will guarantee one talented student a placement at Orbit.  Some sample risos from the project -

Inspired Advice!

Here is a nice little video clip by Holly McNie and Niamh Curran which they prepared for the Schools Project as an ice-breaker for S2-S3 pupils taking on our 'Inspire' project.



The project is funded by the Scottish Government's Developing the Young Workforce initiative, and sponsored by Threebrand.  Find out more about the Schools Project project here.

Baltic Expo

Nice batch of posters from HNC student Renee Simonini for 'Art Blocked' - a proposed expo on 20th century Design-in-Context at the Baltic in Newcastle.


De Stijl  and Surrealism


Pop Art and Constructivism


You can look through a selection  from the rest of the class on the pinterest board for this project.

Celebrity Spreads

Some nice examples from 'Celebrity Spreads' - an HNC Graphics typography project focussing on print editorial design. The requirements - a celebrity photo, a full bleed layout, and a few hundred words.



Blonde - Christina Giannakou


Fassbender - Dora Bowman


Jaar - Ildiko Rohonka


Florence - Sarah Mary Macrae

Just Traditional Types

Each year we make a pilgrimage to Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders to visit Robert Smail's Printing Works.

Founded in 1866, Robert Smail's Printing Works provided quality printed materials to Scotland for 120 years until its closure in1986, when the property was taken over by the National Trust for Scotland. It remains the only operational jobbing printer of its kind in country, and represents an important part of Scotland's industrial heritage.

This year we made two visits, one with our NC Graphics group, and a second visit with both HNC Graphics and HNC Interactive Design. The team at Robert Smail's gave each group a brilliant tour of the workshop, from the type specimens, printing press machinery and letterpress to the extensive and fascinating archive. The students also got a chance to typeset their own names in metal type and then letterpress print the results.

A visit to this amazing workshop is a bit like going back in time, and the traditional machinery, techniques and experience of working with real type is still a key ingredient in design education that we find inspires student designers and informs their the modern digitally-orientated typographical work in their projects.













All pics by Chris Radley, HNC Graphic Design

Inspire CD Cover

Our NC class gave their first full presentation today in the studio for 'Inspire' - a CD cover project we like to set every year for this class. NC Graphics is the foundation and entry year to our HN programme, and the focus is on process rather than product in the early stages.

The project produced lots or original thinking and some great artwork, as well as giving us an insight into the musical tastes of our fledgling designers. This effort by David Buchanan was suitably inspiring - an imagined compilation album by Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ros, called 'Vonlenska' (the name of the invented language which the band write and sing in). The cover came wrapped in brown paper and contained a cover wallet plus a 16-page stitched booklet.  More examples will appear soon on our Pinterest boards.

Say You'll Be There

The print invites go out today for our Industry Night & Show, being held on May 29th at Creative Exchange in Leith.  The campaign concept came from HNC students Saulius Strebulis, Adriana Matecka and Dan Plunkett, with Art Direction from one of our longest-serving mentors Alan Lennon of Lennon Design.

We've had a fantastic response so far, with well over 120 industry professionals and designers saying 'yes' via our online invite form at www.etcshow.net. Every one of those nice people will get a couple of these print invites through the door over the next couple of days. We're still expecting a flurry of extra attendees, and if you are amongst them, you'll be able to pick up the invites on the night at the reception!


(A5 Colourplan by GF Smith, printed by Inkspotz).

Pop-Up Gift

As well as a fistful of excellent posters for the studio, we brought back a copy of Marion Bataille's hugely successful pop-up book 'ABC3D', purchased in the bookshop at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart.

Fashion Editorial

The last project of the calendar year for our final year students was an editorial design. For this brief they worked alongside HND Make-Up Artistry students and HND Photography students, to produce original covers and sample spreads for either Dazed + Confused, or ID Magazine. Some of the students chose to work in pairs, splitting up copy, art direction and production duties. The brief also required print layouts to be re-purposed appropriately for iPad using InDesign's Folio Builder. Some samples below capture the essence of the project.

Andy Palfreyman & Iona Wright //  I-D











Holly Kemp // I-D











Ryan Allan & Jordan Pollock // Dazed + Confused









Emma Fitchie // I-D